Since February 20, I have published a series of nineteen blog posts on the Trump administration and the inadequacy of the Left.  They can be found at: http://www.globallearning-cuba.com/blog-umlthe-view-from-the-southuml/category/trump.

 

     The Trump project emerges in a time of a global situation of crisis, chaos and fear, a situation that is rooted in a number of factors, including: the incapacity of the neocolonial world-system to carry out the reformist visions of Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Jimmy Carter; and the abandonment by the global elite, beginning in 1980, of all efforts at reform, turning instead to what has been, in effect, an economic and military assault on the Third World.  These post-1980 dynamics established conditions favorable to the emergence in the Third World of an extremist strategy, a new type of terrorism characterized by the indiscriminate killing of civilians; and they generated desperate economic and social conditions in the Third World, creating an uncontrolled international migration.  These two phenomena have provoked fears and anxieties among the peoples of the North, making it possible for the Trump project to attain a certain degree of popular support.

 

     The emergence of Trump also has been aided by the failure of the Left to formulate a narrative that is an alternative to the mainstream American narratives.  The Left has failed to formulate a politically-effective comprehensive and historical explanation of the global structural sources of the new form of terrorism and the uncontrolled international migration, and it has not offered politically intelligent proposals in response to these phenomena. 

 

    The posts are as follows:

“Trump and the war on terrorism, Part One” 2/20/2017;

“Trump and the war on terrorism, Part Two” 2/21/2017;

“Trump on immigration” 2/22/2017;

“Let’s build houses in Mexico” 2/23/2017;

“Trump’s economic nationalism” 2/24/2017;

“Trump, corporations, and the environment” 2/27/2017;

“Trump’s populism” 2/28/2017;

“Trump and US militarist foreign policy” 3/1/2017;

“Trump’s neo-fascist project” 3/2/2017;

“A grand narrative from the Left” 3/3/2017;

“An alternative epistemology of the Left” 3/6/2017;

“The Third World grand narrative” 3/7/2017;

“A Left narrative on the Third World” 3/8/2017;

“A Left narrative on immigration” 3/9/2017;

“A narrative on morality in international affairs” 3/10/2017;

“An integral and comprehensive narrative” 3/13/2017;

“The function of government” 3/14/2017;

“Trump’s masterful speech” 3/15/2017;

“Power to the people!” 3/16/2017.

 

Find the posts at: http://www.globallearning-cuba.com/blog-umlthe-view-from-the-southuml/category/trump.

 

Charles McKelvey

Professor Emeritus

Presbyterian College

Clinton, South Carolina

 

Section on Political Science from the South

Division of Philosophy and History

University of Havana

Havana, Cuba